disneykid4ever
Lilo Lives On My Street
- Joined
- Jun 2, 2005
- Messages
- 366
Just got back from a trip down to Orlando from Ottawa and flew U.S. Airways. This is our second time trying this airline and our experience both times has been horrible, with this last time being a total deal-breaker. Our first trip back in Feb '06 consisted of late flight departures and losing our luggage on the way to Orlando (the luggage finally got delivered 12 hours after we landed). We thought maybe it was just a bad day for U.S. Airways, so decided to give them another shot for Jan '07. This time the flight departures were as much as 25 minutes late, the ground crew in Philadelphia decided to forego loading bags onto the plane until 15 minutes prior to takeoff for watching the Ravens & Colts playoff game in the terminal amongst passengers. I kid you not, there were 6 to 8 ground crew members leaning up against walls and furniture watching this game and then we heard them say "okay guys, guess we should do this plane now". But the straw that broke it was when we arrived in Ottawa (at 9:30pm) one of our bags was missing AND the U.S. Airways Delayed Baggage Rep had just gone home for the night. Customs officials tried to page her and call her cell phone but she did not respond. We were given a phone number to call by an Air Canada rep and were told we could file our claim over the phone. This phone number was supposedly manned 24 hours a day. We got home at 11pm, called the phone number over and over for 30 minutes or so and no one would answer. When we woke up the next morning we called again and again no answer. After picking up our dogs from their boarding kennel we spent over 2 hours on the phone calling numerous U.S. Airways numbers only to be routed to call centers in Central America and Manila. No one at these call centers could help us because we didn't have a claim number because no one had been at the airport to file a claim for us. They kept telling us we had to go back to the airport to file a claim and oh, by the way, they are only open at the airport today until noon. I couldn't believe the horrible customer service we were getting and I have worked for many years in this industry. It was infuriating, frustrating, and downright unbelievable. As we sat there at our kitchen table with our jaws on the floor in disbelief, I decided to try that "24 hour" number again and wonder of wonders someone answered. She took our info (bag #, address, name, etc . . .) and said they would call us when the next flight from Philly was to land which was supposed to be 10:50am (it actually didn't land until just after 12 noon, nice , huh!). Our bag ended up being delivered to our house at 2pm. We were so happy to see it, you would think it was a long lost child. We called U.S. Airways Consumer Affairs dept and filed a formal complaint specifically indicating the ground crew unprofessionalism and the screwed up customer service via telephone. To me, it is a wonder that U.S. Airways has not gone bankrupt but I suppose their somewhat competitive pricing keeps that from happening. I have solemnly sworn to never ever fly U.S. Airways again, not even if they gave me free tickets, and I am letting anyone and everyone know what they may have to look forward to if they choose to fly them. I would rather spend a bit more to get great customer service than to get a good deal on airfare only to get no support from the carrier.
